For throughout Burma, wherever the Tatmadaw is present, rape is a common occurrence. And in Kachin State, the Tatmadaw presence has increased significantly. Even during the ceasefire, according to the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG), between 1992 and 2006 the number of Tatmadaw battalions in Kachin State increased from twenty-six to forty-one.18 The Transnational Institute concurred, claiming that ‘ceasefire groups complain that the number of Burma Army battalions around their areas increased after the ceasefire’. The report quotes a Kachin development worker: ‘There have been many constructions of military compounds and bases. No one could disagree that there are now more SPDC military bases inside Kachin territory than before ceasefire time.’19 If the regime was serious about peace-making, why would it increase its presence in the ceasefire areas? Indeed, during the ceasefire the Tatmadaw continued to carry out sporadic attacks on the KIA, as it did on 21 March 2001, when it tortured and killed nine KIA soldiers and two civilians,20 and on 2 January 2006, when it killed five KIA soldiers21 and burned their bodies.22 In November 2007 the SPDC raided a KIA outpost near the KIO headquarters at Laiza, and arrested six KIA soldiers.23 As one Kachin activist concluded, ‘the ceasefire [was] one-sided. It [was] not peace-making or peace-building, and there [was] political deadlock. There is no improvement politically.’24 Since the regime broke the ceasefire, the number of Burma Army battalions in Kachin and northern Shan States has risen to at least 150, a dramatic increase in an already heavily militarised area.
Just as rape accompanies the military presence in Kachin State, so does forced labour. Villagers, particularly those living near a Tatmadaw base, are regularly required to provide a ‘labour contribution’. Villagers are ordered to dig bunkers, build barracks and fences around army camps, clean towns and villages or even build entire army camps. They face heavy fines, or jail, if they are unable or unwilling to help.
Forced labour is often demanded on Sundays, deliberately, because the Kachins are predominantly Christian and their faith is integral to their identity and culture. The church, as one senior pastor told me, is at the centre of Kachin society and provides a structure ‘upon which our identity, our lifestyle, are based’.25 Although Christians in Burma, including Kachin State, can generally worship on Sundays, there is a subtle – and sometimes less subtle – hostility towards them from the regime. ‘I want to tell the world that the Burma Army discriminates against us,’ a woman in a camp for internally displaced people told me in January 2012. ‘We never loot or destroy or disrespect Buddhist pagodas, but they do this with our churches. There is a lot of religious discrimination. We always pray for freedom for the Kachin. We ask you to pray for freedom, especially for the next generation.’ A Catholic priest said: ‘They do not honour churches. They stay in the churches, [using them as army bases], and they destroy statues, open fire at churches.’
During the ceasefire, religious persecution in Kachin State was, according to one pastor, ‘not harsh or aggressive’ in comparison with the situation in Chin State, but nevertheless there was even then a clear undercurrent of discrimination. One Kachin pastor told me that ‘there is no religious freedom’ in Kachin State, because although on the surface Sunday services can be held, churches are subjected to a variety of other forms of restriction, discrimination and harassment. ‘The SPDC hates Kachins and Chins because we are Christians,’ one Kachin pastor told me. Another said: ‘The regime wants Burman Buddhism to dominate. They want all people to be Buddhist. So they discriminate against the rights of other religions.’26 Christians, concluded a third pastor, ‘are forced to accept Buddhist traditions, to recite Buddhist scriptures – it is a clever strategy, a sort of [subtle] forcible conversion.’27
In the ceasefire period, this took insidious forms. The local authorities, for example, regularly hold staff meetings and training days for government employees on Sundays, in the full knowledge that for the Kachin Christians, Sunday is a day of rest and worship. Christians in government service, including schoolteachers and doctors, are therefore forced to make a choice: to attend these meetings, and miss their Sunday church services, or refuse to attend the government meetings but risk being sacked. Those who are sacked are typically replaced with Buddhists.
Obtaining permission to build new churches, or renovate or extend existing churches, or hold church gatherings other than a Sunday service can be extremely difficult. In 2003, the Kachin Baptist Convention asked the SPDC for permission to hold its convention, which normally takes place every three years. Permission was delayed for several months, until it was finally granted – but the convention had to take place in a different location. Such delays are deliberately intended to disrupt and hinder church activities without completely preventing them.
In 2006, a church in Bhamo received a letter from local authorities ordering them to stop the construction of a new church building. Although they had received verbal permission from General Khin Nyunt when he had been in power, it appears that approval had been rescinded when he was purged. A new order had been issued by the Ministry of Religious Affairs prohibiting the construction of new churches or mosques. In contrast, there are no restrictions on the construction of new Buddhist monasteries, and the previous year a new monastery was built in Kachin State, and Christian villagers were forced at gunpoint to contribute construction materials for it.
In October 2005, the Burma Army’s northern commander, Brigadier General Ohn Myint, gave a speech at the Second Quarterly Executive Meeting of the Kachin State Peace and Development Council, in Myitkyina Township Hall, in the presence of other senior local officials. He left no one in any doubt of how the regime views Kachin Christians. He focused on an order to every village to display a signboard with the village name and population statistics. Then he announced:
No village has done this yet. Instead we see only the religious symbols of the cross. Some of these religious symbols are made of concrete, rocks and bricks. A big cross with a crucified Christ was built on the top of the highest hill (2,885 feet) in Myitkyina town, just five miles from the town centre. Even though there was a big religious celebration at the hill, it is surprising that the Kachin State SPDC officials were not informed. They cannot build Kachin cultural symbols and religious symbols of the cross everywhere in Kachin State … We must not allow church buildings everywhere without legal permission.
The implication is that the Kachins’ religious faith makes them disloyal to the state, accusing them of following ‘a colonial legacy’. He equally attacked any hopes of autonomy that the Kachin may have. ‘We must rebuild the spirit of union of Myanmar …. We cannot in any means accept separation of the states. As long as there is the Union of Myanmar, there must not be any separation. It is absolutely unacceptable if there were separation of the states from the union. Therefore we must try to diminish such ideas.’
General Ohn Myint was, in addition, determined to counter the activities of the democracy movement in Kachin State. ‘We must be prepared to know everything,’ he told government officials, ‘so that we can crush them and root them out.’ He said that the SPDC must hold mass public gatherings to show their strength. ‘We should not just read out our speeches, but persuasively tell the people in order to make them believe what we are doing is right.’ Government officials, he added, must follow orders. ‘Responsible officials of all state departments must obey the law – you must either lead or be led, and those who cannot lead or be led will be punished.’28
Land confiscation is widespread, and sometimes impacts on religious freedom. In 2002, a prayer mountain belonging to the church at Daw Hpum Yang, very close to the KIO headquarters in Laiza on the Myitkyina– Bhamo road, was seized by the Tatmadaw and occupied. A cross and prayer room at the top of the mountain were destroyed, and it is believed that Russian-made rockets were installed, targeting the KIO. Villagers were then forced to build a landing strip on the mountain, and it is reported that both Senior General Than Shwe and the then Prime Minister Soe Win visited on several occasions.
On Christmas Eve 2005, residents of a village in Putao district were ordered to relocate, and to destroy the church they had constructed. Earlier that year, farmland in another area, including a forty-acre fruit farm, growing oranges and mangos, belonging to a church pastor, was occupied by Light Infantry Battalion 438.29
Religious discrimination, land confiscation and environmental degradation, the three major challenges for the Kachin during the ceasefire, are all interrelated. The regime, its businesses, and Chinese-owned businesses have all been active in plundering the land in Kachin State, for teak and other natural resources. Deforestation is widespread, and none of the forests have been replaced. Dam construction is a concern too, as it leads to displacement of villages, and the regime plans several dams along the Mali Hka, N’Mai Hka and Irrawaddy rivers. Gold mining has had a particularly devastating effect, causing not just environmental disaster but widespread displacement. ‘After the mining is finished, the land is destroyed, mercury pollutes the rivers, there are no trees – but then the people are told they can return to their land,’ one Kachin told me. ‘When you look at the policy from above, it looks like development. But when you look closely, you see that it equals land confiscation and displacement.’
Perhaps one of the starkest examples of this phenomenon is the Hukong Valley, and particularly the Yuzana Company, a corporation with close links to Senior General Than Shwe. The company is engaged in rubber, physic nut, teak, tapioca and sugar-cane plantations, and has confiscated large areas of land in the Hukong Valley, without providing any compensation to the local people. In June 2007 a Kachin man organised a petition, with 1,300 signatures, calling for thirty-six acres of wet paddy rice farmland to be returned to them. He sent the petition to Than Shwe, and copied it to various government ministries, and when he did, he was arrested, detained, interrogated and harassed. He escaped, and went into hiding. Remarkably, he came out of hiding and met with the local authorities, and secured agreement for the return of some land to local farmers – a rare and miraculous outcome in Burma.30
Public opinion may be taken into account in more development projects in the future, if President Thein Sein’s decision to suspend the Myitsone Dam is anything to go by. In September 2011, after months of petitions and protests led primarily by the Kachin, Thein Sein announced the suspension of the $3.6 billion hydroelectric dam scheduled for completion in 2019.31 Although he has suspended the project only until the end of his term of office, in 2015, the decision surprised many, not least because of the anger it caused China, the other major investor in the dam. Taking public opinion into account, however, is unlikely to be the only explanation for the decision – a desire to distance Burma from China, and win favour in Washington, DC, Delhi and Brussels, is likely to have been a consideration as well. The test will be what happens after 2015.
Another major social challenge for the Kachins is the trafficking of women. Although this is not perpetrated directly by the regime, it is a consequence of the regime’s mismanagement of the economy and its failure to invest in education and job creation. Moreover, the regime has completely failed to tackle the issue. As a result, women disappear ‘almost every day’, according to Kachin sources. Since 2006, over 138 cases of trafficking have been documented, mostly involving women aged between fifteen and thirty. But many, many more cases go unreported.
Women are typically lured with the promise of a better job in China, where wages are higher than local salaries in Kachin State. Once in China, however, they are often taken thousands of miles, to the far north – Beijing, Hunan, Shandong and Manchuria – where they are either sold into prostitution, or traded as ‘wives’ to Chinese men. Often they are sold on by their buyers many times.
Those who are sold into the sex trade are often subjected to violent exploitation and grotesque treatment. In one case, albeit an extreme one, a thirteen-year-old girl, who was eventually rescued, reported having been forced to have sex with dogs. Another reported being gang-raped by ten men, before her owner then decided he did not like her and ordered her to repay the money he had paid for her. When she told him she was unable to refund the money without a job, he arranged a job for her where she stayed twenty-eight days. She claimed she was gang-raped every night. Finally, unable to endure it any more, she escaped, but was chased by her captors with dogs. She fled into the forest, where she wandered for five days without food or water, before reaching a town. She found the police station, and was rescued and returned to Kachin State.
Most cases involve women, but in some instances children have been abducted and trafficked as well. At the end of 2008, a five-year-old boy from Laiza disappeared, and in Myitkyina a baby was abducted and sold. In 2009, an eleven-year-old boy was taken to Yinjiang, in Yunnan Province, China, three hours from the border, where potential purchasers came to examine him. They checked his height but found he was taller than their requirements, and so he was left, un-sold, in Yinjiang. Having no idea where he was, he sat crying until he was found by a woman who helped him return to Burma.
Kachin groups working to help women who have been trafficked say that the Chinese authorities are very cooperative, and help rescue women and children. If a victim of trafficking is able to make a telephone call, the number can be traced and the Chinese police can often locate them. In many cases, the women are held captive and not allowed out, but sometimes they are able to go outside for a walk and are occasionally recognised by police or local people as being foreign.
Returning rescued women to Burma, however, is expensive, and the Chinese authorities are now saying they will only rescue victims of trafficking if the travel expenses involved can be recovered. This can require up to 10,000 renminbi (1,500 dollars). The women usually do not have any clothing, so they need money for food and clothes as well.
The regime is doing little to stop this trade, and in some cases actively denies that it is happening. In 2007, a woman was rescued and returned to Myitkyina, where she identified the trafficker and filed a lawsuit against him. In an ultimate injustice, the trafficker reportedly won the court case and the woman was jailed for a month for violating immigration laws, including crossing the border illegally. After her release from prison she had to move to another location due to the risks she faced in Myitkyina. The wife of the Tatmadaw commander in Kachin State, who serves as chair of the Kachin State Women’s Affairs Organisation, was informed, but she denied that the case was true.32
As if rape, forced labour, land confiscation, religious discrimination, environmental degradation and human trafficking were not enough, Kachin State has become a centre for drug trafficking and addiction in Burma. There is widespread belief among the Kachins that drugs are deliberately promoted by the regime. Government agents are allegedly involved in distributing drugs, and only Burman drug users are arrested. Kachin students at Myitkyina University openly use drugs, without any penalty, and it is claimed that the police only arrest dealers if they stop dealing. ‘It is part of a deliberate policy to destroy Kachin young people through drug abuse,’ one person told me. ‘If they cannot destroy us militarily, they try to do so using drugs.’
As a result of the drug trade, prostitution and trafficking of women, HIV/AIDS has spread through Kachin State in a dramatic way. In 2008, the biggest hospital in the KIO-controlled town of Laiza reported over 1,000 HIV/AIDS patients, most of them intravenous drug users. In Mai Ja Yang, the second major KIO-controlled town, eight out of ten intravenous drug users are HIV positive, according to Health Unlimited. Médecins Sans Frontières claim that AIDS-related illnesses killed 25,000 people in Burma in 2007, and that at least 240,000 people are infected with the virus.33
In April 2009, I made another visit to KIO-controlled areas in Kachin State. On the day I arrived, 28 April, I was told that senior KIO officials had been summoned to Myitkyina for a meeting with regime officials. The following day, they returned and invited me to meet them. They told me that the regime had issued an ultimatum, to them and to all other ceasefire gr
oups: to become a border guard force, under the auspices of the Tatmadaw, and with a remit restricted to a ten-kilometre zone along the China border. Under the proposal, the KIO and its armed wing, the KIA, would surrender their troops and arms to the SPDC.
When I met them, the KIO and KIA leaders were adamant that this deal was unacceptable. ‘Asking us to disarm without solving the political situation is cheating us,’ said one very senior leader. ‘They didn’t discuss a political solution, but demanded the submission of our arms to be under their control. They wanted us to surrender not only our arms but also our troops. It’s like a joke.’ In an extraordinary understatement, he added: ‘This demand shows that the regime is not pure-hearted.’
The ceasefire agreement signed in 1994 stipulates that the KIO and KIA would retain their arms until a constitutional agreement is reached. The KIO has consistently expressed its view that the new constitution introduced in 2008 is not satisfactory. A senior KIA officer warned me that the regime’s ultimatum could break the ceasefire. ‘If the political situation is solved properly, then we don’t want to retain our arms. But we have been waiting for a real federal union for a long time. The SPDC is destroying the essence of federal union. Even though we try to speak about a union, they do not … The government is creating a situation to force us back to war. We do not want war, but they may force us into that situation.’ Two years later, that prediction was proven all too prescient.
Just four months after my visit in 2009, further south along the China– Burma border, the regime did to another ethnic group precisely what the Kachins predicted might happen to them. After the Kokang, an ethnic Chinese group who had had a ceasefire with the regime for twenty years, rejected the idea of becoming a border guard force, the Tatmadaw launched a brutal military offensive, causing the largest refugee flow from Burma in years. The Kokang, or Myanmar National Democracy Alliance Army (MNDAA), had grown out of the old Communist Party of Burma, and the leaders were involved in the drugs trade, establishing a heroin refinery in their region. The regime used this as one reason for the attack, issuing arrest warrants against the Kokang leaders, even though for twenty years a ceasefire had prevailed and the regime was itself complicit with the drugs trade.
Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads Page 15